Israel Matzav

Arutz Sheva reaching the conclusion that the 'Qana massacre' was a fake

Arutz Sheva is reaching the conclusion that I was reaching on Tuesday: that the 'Qana massacre' was a fake engineered by Hezbullah. Does the truth still matter? I think it does. How many of you know today that Muhammed Al-Dura was killed by 'Palestinians' six years ago and not by Israeli troops? Does it matter? Well, you don't see the 'Palestinians' raising the issue anymore.

When you read this piece, note the part that I highlighted in red about the munitions dump. You can't have any bigger human shields than that.

The central piece of evidence leading to this conclusion is the fact, mentioned by IDF officials from the very beginning, that the building collapsed a full seven hours after the Israel Air Force bombing. Why, then, would the residents inside not have been evacuated in the meantime? As Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force told reporters Sunday night, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.” Without additional evidence, Eshel merely left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists, or explosives they left behind, caused the explosion.

"Indeed," writes Robert Spencer for FrontPageMagazine, "it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed."

Gen. Eshel also said that the building was used by Hizbullah to store explosives. This was supported by a letter by Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a southern Lebanese Shiite, who wrote that Hizbullah terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it.

In addition, as Reuven Koret writes for IsraelInsider, the bombing of the area occurred in three waves. The first bombs, according to CNN correspondent Brent Sadler, did not hit the building in question, but rather landed "20 or 30 meters" away. The second strike hit targets further away, and the third strike, around 7:30 in the morning, landed over 400 meters away. The first reports of a collapsed building arrived a half-hour later.

Another CNN correspondent, Ben Wedeman, noted that there was a larger crater next to the building. He observed that the roof of the building was intact and that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Thus, the building was used to store explosives, was apparently not destroyed by the bombing, and sheltered dozens of women and children throughout a night of bombing. The identity of the victims was also not clear, except that they were not the original occupants of the building; a National Public Radio correspondent reported that they had left. "The victims were non-residents who chose to shelter in the building that night," Koret writes, and who were "'too poor' to leave the town, one resident told CNN's Wedeman. Who were these people?"

Hear Koret speak about the Hizbullah manipulation on IsraelNationalRadio.com.

As an aside, the hospital in Tyre, Lebanon, and Human Rights Watch both reported today that 28 people were killed in the Kafr Kana bombing, and not twice that number, as originally reported.

Read the whole thing. By the way, the International Red Cross has 'no information' as to whether any autopsies were performed.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:08 PM